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Nigerian energy firm Taleveras Group said on Monday it had signed a deal with the government of Equatorial Guinea to build a giant oil storage hub in the central African country.
The Bioko Island facility will have a total capacity of 1.34 million tonnes of storage for crude oil and products such as gasoline, naphtha, jet fuel and fuel oil, the firm said.
[It] will therefore be ideally located to service the key oil supply and demand centres throughout West Africa
It will be the largest crude and products storage facility in Africa.
“The terminal will be built at Punta Europa, located on the Bioko Island part of Equatorial Guinea, and will therefore be ideally located to service the key oil supply and demand centres throughout West Africa,” the statement said.
Taleveras, a growing trading firm with more than $2 billion in credit lines, did not give a value for the deal or a start date.
It said it obtained the rights in December through an open negotiation process which involved several companies, without naming them.
Global trading houses are vying for access to Africa’s booming gasoline and diesel markets where demand is expected to grow by nearly 60 percent by 2025, according to African energy consultancy CITAC.
Storage hubs near big markets can help trading firms boost profits by allowing them to quickly exploit arbitrage opportunities resulting from changes in supply and demand.
Switzerland’s Gunvor signed a similar deal with Gabon in 2013 to create a joint trading company to sell oil products along the western coast of Africa.
